From Bocce Ball to your URL: Italy's Business Weak

Although I haven't been paying all that much attention to the news these days, being up to my eyeballs in up your bottom! some events, large & small, caught my eye nonetheless.

First, I noticed that the brainiacs over at Italy's web registry, Register.it have started offering .com addresses and lowering their extortionist rates.  You early readers of the blog might recall that these are the bozos who charge you $50+ for a .it address and then make you send in 15 faxes over 75 days to three different offices to make the deal go through (and, to be absolutely sure - because you've declared - that you're not a mafioso...).  Click here for the story or search register.it in the blog finder.
So, once Italians started doing what they do best: skirt around the rules&regulations, and everyone started getting .coms at godaddy (for $4.99 - instantly), they seemed to have wizened up.   
The one place on earth where they actually impeded web growth more is probably Iran. As for me? I'll stick with godaddy.

Even better, the City has started to allow certificates (like aforementioned anti-mafia one) to be sent in online.  Anyone living in Italy will attest that this is nothing short of revolutionary. The only event that comes close would be the advent of the printing press (if you happened to be a belabored monk painstakingly penning miniscule miniatures on parchment in a faraway monastery).
It's probably some nationalistic Lega party ploy to drive business away from the ubiquitous Bangladeshi fax stores, but who cares? I just wonder how many times you'll have to hit resend, or how fast you'll be timed out and have to start over from scratch.

Then, Rome's province announced a studentonline hotline, to report about things falling apart at your school.  They've determined things will be fixed within 72 hours.  It's unclear whether the hotline however means you will be getting a tool kit within 24 hrs. and asked to make the repairs yourself...

Just when you thought that bocce ball was a dying sport, last played by old men in berets, the best news of all is (drum roll please) the building of a spanking new, white & pretty snazzy bocciodromo near EUR.  Just in time to host the national championships, with world championships coming this summer (which I will endeavor to attend).  They're also hoping that all this attention will allow it into Olympic competition.
I for one cannot believe it's not in the Olympics, considering they let in curling???
But, just think: the one sport where you can be a pot-bellied octogenerian with bad teeth and still be an Olympian.  Sign me up.

picture from urloweb